Page - 908 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

908 The June Battle in Veneto The signs of dissolution, surrender and resignation appeared to be in stark contrast to the events on the front, and the impressive data of which the Army could continue to boast. However, this was already a case of the famous colossus with feet of clay. At the beginning of 1918, the Imperial and Royal armed forces consisted of almost four- and-a-half million men, of which almost three million were allocated to the army lines in the field.2183 However, only 915,000 men were now deployed at the front ; in other words, for every man at the front, there were five men ‘at the back’. Austro-Hungarian troops were positioned on the eastern border of Ukraine, at Galaţi on the Danube estuary, in the south of Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania, in the Veneto region and with several contingents in Palestine. However, the condition of the army in the field and, even more so, the situation among the one-and-a-half million soldiers in the interior of the Monarchy, could now only be a cause for concern. The economy’s need for replacements in human resources could only be covered by half. In order to counteract nationalist agitation, the tactic of demixing, discarding and removal to other locations was again employed. If, for example, there were still up to 48 per cent Italians in the ‘Kaiserjäger’ Imperial Rifles in 1915, now, the figure was six per cent at most. Some troop bodies that had formerly had a high proportion of certain nationalities had been ‘de-nationalised’. Instead, new formations were created such as the ‘south-west battalions’, in which the Italians were gathered together, for example. However, these were not used on the south-western front, but in Ukraine and Buk- ovina.2184 Soon, sickness accounted for 90 per cent of losses, and even when it is taken into account that due to the decline in fighting, the number of dead and wounded had decreased dramatically, the figure was alarming : the emaciated soldiers had little im- mune capacity left. In September 1917, a female auxiliary corps had even been created in order to free up more soldiers for the front. Initially, around 28,000 women applied to join the corps, but, even then, it was not possible to relocate many more men to the trenches.2185 The replacement battalions sent reports of a lack of discipline at regular intervals, and the situation did not improve. In Prague, for example, the station command had reported around 5,000 complaints, including 676 cases of desertion, in December 1917, which was even so regarded as ‘quiet’.2186 Taking disciplinary action was impossible, except in isolated cases. It was fortunate that the march battalions and squadrons could still be assembled and sent to the front, and that the requests of the enterprises for ‘commands’ could still be met. Even so, month by month, the number of enterprises that were being shut down was increasing. They had no more workers, no raw materials, and no fuel left. From the summer of 1917 onwards, an increasing lack of metals had become no- ticeable. The iron contributions were reduced by a quarter. The lack of coal meant that large-scale enterprises in the steel industry were forced to halt production from 1 May